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The two measures of the greatest importance that came up for consideration before the Council in my time were an amendment of the Bengal Municipal Act and a complete revision of the Calcutta Municipal Act. The former was pending when the reform- ed Council was formed, the latter was introduced in 1897. They both referred to local self-government and the municipal institutions of the land, with whose practical working I was quite familiar. I had been chairman of a mofussil municipality since 1885 and a member of the Calcutta Corporation since the introduction of the elective system in 1876. In dealing with these measures I was on familiar ground and commanded a degree of experience that was very helpful to me in my legislative work. The amendment of the Bengal Municipal Bill was the work of Sir Charles Elliott, then Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal. From 1893 till his retirement I was in close touch with him. Personally our relations were friendly and even cordial. I had the amplest opportunities of knowing the man and the ruler. He came from the United Provinces and was somewhat unfamiliar with the ways and methods of the people of Bengal. But his industry was marvellous; his mastery of detail, which would have been admirable in the Collector of a district, was somewhat out of place in the ruler of a great province. His too close touch with details interfered with his clear vision of principles. Unfamiliar as he was with Bengal, he had the good sense to summon Mr. Henry Cotton to fill the office of Chief Secretary.

No member of the Bengal Civil Service enjoyed in an equal measure the confidence and esteem of the people, and the appointment was welcomed as a good augury. That the hopeful anticipations entertained were not realized was not Mr. Cotton's fault; for he had to deal with an administrator who was a typical bureaucrat. Sir Charles Elliott had a profound faith in the Civil Service and an unshaken conviction that the Government of the country by the Civil Service was the best that could have been devised by the genius of man. As a necessary corollary to this belief there was a feeling, more or less pronounced, which ran through all his measures, that the people could not be trusted to manage their own affairs. As between Indians and Englishmen, however, he made no distinction in social amenities, or in official employment. But he had an unswerving faith in the saving virtues of the Civil Service, as an all but infallible controlling agency for the admini- stration of the country. This distrust of the people and of popular institutions lay at the root of the two most prominent measures of